It has been a whirlwind of a week! Taking all of the suggestions I received from my last post, I decided to start full-force with planning. I have planned out the first week of Math and am starting on the first week of Writing. Last night, I wrote several pieces for my Writer’s Folder for Workshop. I will be using the pieces as the foundation of my minilessons for the first week. I also did the overall plan for unit 1 so now I will start working on my daily lesson plans for writing during the first week. I am really hesitant about planning more than 1 week in advance because I have no clue who my students are, let alone where they are academically. All teachers must submit lesson plans the Thursday before the week they are to be taught, so right now I am feeling pretty good.
I also got news that I will be meeting with my principal next Friday as a part of New Teacher Week. Hopefully then, or sometime soon after, I will learn who my students are so I can mail out an introductory letter to them and their families!
Best News of the Day: I get to pick up the keys to my classroom on Friday morning!!! I plan to stick around for a few hours and navigate my way through the tons of stuff in the room. For some reason, I feel like some of it belongs to other teachers, so I’m gonna try and determine to whom it really belongs.
Plan of Attack for the Next Week (in no particular order):
• Plan out first week of Writing
• Aug 4- Plan Literacy Block with Literacy Coach
• Get more info about science/social studies curriculum and plan to teach (I would almost think we didn’t teach science/s.s. because since May, I have only heard these subjects referenced maybe twice- compared to 1,000,202 references to Math and Literacy)
• Complete Classroom Newsletter
• Finish and Mail Intro Letter to Parents
• Create Plan/Activities for First Day of School
• ORGANIZE/DECORATE CLASSROOM
Our first day of school is a half day. What does your very first day of school look like?
Teacher Cardigans in my Etsy Shop!
4 months ago
We have a full day of school the first day. Usually I spend half of the morning doing introductions and going over rules and things. Depending on the grade, sometimes I have them do a writing sample for me. I also usually start a read-aloud chapter book. The second half of the morning I usually start some of my assessments (spelling screener and a math screener I use) so that I can get those graded ASAP and know where my kiddos are starting with that stuff.
ReplyDeleteThe second half of the day, usually from lunch - dismissal is more procedures instruction and then going over school-wide information. We are a positive behavior school (my last one was too) so we have some things that are school-wide procedures that we are required to model and practice on the first day. If I'm really lucky, we get in a little curriculum review disguised as math games :)